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Illinois Times, the capital city's weekly source of news, politics, arts, entertainment, culture
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A Chatham solar project approved by the Sangamon County Board in late 2021, on the same evening the Board approved the 4,100-acre Double Black Diamond Solar farm, is finally expected to begin construction in August.
At least one-fourth of the approximately 650-acre solar field’s power will be directed to CWLP. Its owner and operator, AES Corporation, could soon be owned in part by Global Infrastructure Partners, a part of BlackRock, which also owns CyrusOne. The proposed $10.7 billion deal would privatize AES under BlackRock’s umbrella, netting AES shareholders $15 per share held.
AES acquired Community Energy Solar, the company that initially proposed the project, in December 2021, one month after the Sangamon County Board gave a 23-3 green light for the local development.
Illinois Times asked AES if the company will prioritize powering operations or companies owned by parent Global Infrastructure Partners should AES stockholders approve the deal. Ella Walker, development manager for AES, did not directly answer the question in a response sent to IT.
“This transaction will deliver compelling near-term value to stockholders and better position AES to drive sustained growth across its business units, allowing the company to deliver reliable energy solutions for customers and create long-term value for other stakeholders, including its workforce and local communities,” Walker wrote, urging those who want more information on the deal to visit TheFutureOfAES.com.
AES is leasing the land for the solar farm from three property owners including Rutkoski Brothers Inc, the Twyford Family Trust and, most of all, Dowson Family Farms-connected JDI Farms.
Chard Farms also originally had a stake in the lease when the project was approved by board members in 2021, but ultimately decided against leasing a parcel of about 160 acres of farmland to AES around 2023, Lynn Chard told IT July 30.
Chard said she made the decision in conjunction with her two sons. “We all three decided no, that we did not want solar panels on our our good ground.”
In May 2025, the Springfield City Council approved a contract to eventually purchase 25 MW of solar power for CWLP from the Chatham project, at a cost of $13.45 million annually. CWLP is one of just seven municipal-owned utilities in Illinois, according to a 2024 U.S. Energy Information Administration survey. The 100 MW solar field is expected to generate nearly $18 million in tax revenue, mostly designated for local school districts, over a quarter century of operation.
As for where the rest of the power will go, Walker didn’t address whether the energy provider has entered into power purchase deals with any data centers.
“Any specific usage may be shared by the customer if and when they see fit,” Walker wrote.
In some cases, backlash against data centers has extended to renewable energy projects thanks to energy companies, including AES, inking deals to power data centers around the clock.
Midcontinent Independent Service Operator says the Midwestern electrical grid is “seeing an unprecedented surge in large load interconnection requests, driven by data centers, advanced manufacturing, AI computing facilities and other energy-intensive industries.” The average renewable energy project in Illinois faces a grid connection delay of roughly 2.5 years, according to MISO’s connection queue dashboard.
Illinois has been courting renewable energy to the best of its ability, even in the face of communities seeking to maintain characteristics of rural country and a federal government that has consistently slowed development of renewables, mostly due to the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act.
Rural residents have frequently questioned why solar panels can’t be placed above parking lots on rooftops rather than utilizing farmland.
Katie Haarsager, stakeholder engagement manager at AES, told Illinois Times it’s certainly possible to build out solar across sun-soaked parking lots and rooftops but additional, expensive infrastructure would be needed to connect enough power from such solar projects to provide power to multiple end users.
“Utility scale is the biggest issue, being able to get grid connectivity, so all of those parking lots, all of those structures that exist – in order to take all of that power, aggregate it into one substation and then get that up onto the grid itself is a really complex feat,” Haarsager said. Attempting to power a small city like Springfield, for example, “just through parking lots or rooftops alone would also require a pretty significant investment in additional powerline structures (and) additional substation capacity.”
She said the transition from polluting, carbon-driven energy toward more sustainable pathways can be a jarring change, but AES will try its best to accommodate neighbors.
“We definitely acknowledge that there’s impacts to projects, to sites and it is a change in viewshed and way of life a little bit, but we try and build them as respectfully as we can in the design and work with neighbors if there’s viewshed issues the best we can,” Haarsager said.
She said large projects such as solar and wind farms should be reassessed in a few decades.
“Technology changes so quickly and so at the end of any project’s life, whether it’s solar or wind, there’s always that discussion of whether or not it makes sense to repower or continue the life of the project,” she said. “Extending the life of facility is always an option, but it’s not necessarily always going to happen.”
Corporate consolidation
The pending sale of AES illustrates a pattern of asset managers and private equity firms buying smaller investment firms and publicly traded companies. In addition to building out energy projects, AES also manages power needs for more than 1 million Midwestern utility customers across Indianapolis and just west of Columbus.
In 2022, investment firm KKR and Global Infrastructure Partners – still its own firm at the time – bought CyrusOne, turning the publicly invested company private. The all-cash transaction was worth about $15 billion, “including the assumption of debt.”
In 2024, asset managing behemoth BlackRock – now in charge of more than $15 trillion of assets, mostly in the form of equity – acquired Global Infrastructure Partners for about $3 billion in cash.
In March 2026, a “consortium led by Global Infrastructure Partners and EQT,” a Swedish investment firm, agreed to acquire AES for another all-cash transaction – about $10.7 billion this time. The deal would be financed in part by the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and the Qatar Investment Authority, Qatar’s state-owned investment firm, as co-underwriters.
The AES Board of Directors unanimously approved the sale and expects the deal to close by late 2026 or early 2027, according to the AES press release announcing the sale.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated Chard Farms was leasing land for a solar project. Chard Farms originally had a stake in the lease when the project was approved but the family ultimately decided against leasing land for the upcoming Chatham solar project.
This article appears in July 30 – August 5, 2026.
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Dilpreet Raju is a staff writer for Illinois Times and a Report for America corps member. He has a bachelor's degree in biochemistry from American University, a master's degree from Medill School of Journalism… More by Dilpreet Raju
1 Comment
Dang, these projects sprout up like mushrooms.
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